Jews are now very much ‘in’ in the country in which 200,000 Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust, as such, so is Israel. The country’s ambassador, Darius Degutis, explains why.

The “warm sympathy” toward Israel in Lithuania today is reminiscent of the
sympathy that many in Western Europe felt for Israel a few decades ago, when
Germans and Scandinavians flocked to kibbutzim to help and support the plucky
little Jewish state.

That, at least, is the way Lithuanian Ambassador to
Israel Darius Degutis sees things. In his home country, indeed in many other
former Soviet bloc countries, Jews, Jewishness and Judaism are cool, attractive
and desirable.

Placed in
historical context, this “Jew is cool” phenomenon is a mind-boggling turnaround.
Some 200,000 Lithuanian Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust – about 95
percent of the prewar Jewish community, making it according to some scholars the
highest ratio anywhere – with the Nazis often aided by eager Lithuanians
citizens.

And placed in present context – where Israel is so uncool in
many corners of Western Europe – it is no less staggering.

Yet there it
is. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post coinciding with Lithuania’s
Statehood Day celebrated on July 6, as well as Lithuanian’s assumption of the
EU’s rotating presidency on July 1, Degutis discussed this
phenomenon.

“For us, and I think probably for all Eastern Europe,
Jewishness is something very attractive,” the convivial ambassador said, in his
12th-floor office in a Tel Aviv office building that commands a spectacular view
of the city. “We had a lot of it [Jews and Judaism], then it was gone. Then
again we started to hear about it; then we had to recognize our fault, our
shame, the Shoah, the Holocaust. And then it was like, ‘Yes, I heard something
from my grandmother about gefilte fish, I heard of the word kosher, but what
does that mean.’” “The best gift I bring to my friends in Lithuania is something
kosher, kosher wine, kosher anything,” he said with a chuckle. “They don’t
understand, but it is good. It is a romantic affiliation with Israel. You bring
a Star of David, a shofar. It is not only Christianity and Jerusalem, it is
Jewishness. ‘Yes, Yes, I remember.

My parents had so many friends who are
Jews’. This is very interesting.”

In Degutis’s telegraphed Lithuanian
timeline, there was the prewar Litvak (a term denoting Lithuanian Jews) glory
days. Then there was the Holocaust. Then the Soviet occupation. Then
Independence.

Born in 1963, at the height of the Cold War and Soviet
domination of his country, Degutis said he did not hear of the Holocaust until
he was a teenager, when his grandmother spoke of it.

“I went to a Soviet
school,” he said, “and heard nothing about the Shoah. Nothing was ever told
officially in the studies or in the history classes, to anyone in the Soviet
Union, or in any of the other socialist countries. They deliberately omitted
anything linked to Jewish history, good or bad, or anything linked to our
[Lithuanian] prewar history.”

“The Shoah, the Holocaust, the Jewish
tragedy did not exits, even the word Jew was not common,” he said. “The Soviets
didn’t want it to be heard.”

Yet, Degutis recalled, he grew up with Jews
in his Vilnius (Vilna) neighborhood, and played football with them. He also
remembered meeting Jewish boys from Moscow summering with their families on
Baltic Sea beaches.

“Thirty percent of the kids in my neighborhood were
Jews, and this was in the 1970s. Then they were gone,” he said, explaining that
this was a time of USSoviet détente when some Jews were given exit
visas.

“We didn’t know what happened, they left to Israel in the ’70s,
but it was hush-hush style. They got the permission to leave, but no one was
saying anything, because they were considered to have betrayed the Soviet system
and state.”

Degutis, who speaks perfect English, grew up on a steady diet
of propaganda, rich in the depiction of Israel as the ally and slave of American
imperialists bent on subjugating the poor countries in the region.

“After we regained independence, when we looked into
our history, we looked into the parts we are proud of, the bright side, the
courageous side of Lithuania, indeed there are very nice and romantic elements,”
he said. “But we also looked at our very tragic history – the Holocaust, the
Shoah.

“When the archives were opened, and the society and public
received this information, there was a big shock that 200,000 Jews died in
Lithuania, and that there were a number of Lithuanians involved in
this.

This was a big shock for us.

“But eventually we managed with
partners from Jewish communities, Jewish organizations in the world, to build a
new Lithuania, and of course by admitting that terrible things had happened, and
that we had a fault in it.

“The next step was the ability that opened in
front of us to remember the Jews that were in our neighborhood.”

HOW
COULD it be that all of a sudden there was a “big shock” when the population
learned that 200,000 Jews were killed, Degutis is asked? Didn’t people wonder
what happened to their neighbors, who were such an integral part of their
country? “You have to understand that the issue was taboo, no parent would ever
dare to say anything, even if they knew anything, because they would be
immediately persecuted by KGB or the party, and would be expelled from work,”
the ambassador explained.

Degutis said he heard about the Holocaust from
his grandmother, because “she had nothing to lose.”

“She told me she
remembered how many Jews lived in Lithuania, and she remembered dramatic
pictures of Jewish people being taken away. She told me when I was a teenager.
That was my only source.”

As if to warn against sitting in judgment, the
ambassador continued: “The system that we lived in was the system of the Lie and
the Fear. They made us lie and made us be afraid. Certain information was taboo,
it was not good to discuss prewar history, or show sympathy to the West. Or if
the Soviets played Americans or Canadians or Germans, you would not dare show
that you were supporting someone other than the Soviets. If you did, you could
get in deep trouble. So you had to keep your mouth shut.

“There was a
huge destruction of our mind during those 50 years [of Soviet occupation]. It
was an Orwellian situation. We were in an Orwellian world; we were kept in a
square box, and controlled by outside forces – brutally
controlled.”

Degutis told a tale of a friend, a famous Lithuanian
athlete, who bemoaned that he lost the opportunity to compete in the 1980 Moscow
Olympic Games because of the US boycott.

“I told him another story,” he
said. “There was a Lithuanian canoe rower who became an Olympic champion in
Munich, of course under the Soviet flag, and he defected. He was traced down by
Soviet agents, sedated, and smuggled back into East Germany.

Then he
ended up being an Olympic champion in the psychiatric hospital – that was the
way of dealing with all the disobedient citizens, to put them in psychiatric
hospitals. People were afraid to talk and discuss things.”

AND THEN, with
independence in 1990, “everything opened up.”

“Not only did we become
free, we were allowed to think and do whatever we wanted. We were able to
travel, we were finally allowed to communicate with our families from whom we
were separated.”

And that meant, he said, also reconnecting with former
Jewish neighbors and friends. “We had many of them, and then they left, and then
there was this natural interest to reconnect with them.”

“When we became
free,” he said, explaining what he described as his countrymen’s nostalgia and
fascination with Jews, “we asked, ‘Where are they? They are our
friends.”

Indeed, he made clear, it was Lithuania’s fraught history with
its Jews – the heyday, the Holocaust, the Soviets, the new found freedom – that
animated the country’s positive sentiment toward Israel today, and explained the
“warm sympathy” to Israel, reminiscent of what existed in Western Europe five
decades ago.

The phenomenon Degutis described is well-known in Jerusalem.
Indeed, it goes a long way toward explaining that along with Germany, the
Netherlands and Italy, Israel’s strongest supporters inside the EU are the
former Iron Curtain countries.

A look at last November’s UN vote on
granting the Palestinians nonmember statehood status tells the story. The 27 EU
countries split on that vote. The only EU country that voted for Israel, and
against the motion, was the Czech Republic. Of the 12 EU countries that
abstained, however, nine of them – including Lithuania – were former Soviet bloc
countries. Not one of these countries joined 14 other EU states in voting for
the resolution.

Lithuania was also one of only four EU countries, and 14
overall, who voted against admitting the Palestinians to UNESCO in
2011.

“It is natural,” Degutis said about this against-the-mainstream
voting pattern on Israel. “It is not only a romantic approach. We understand
what it is to be small; we understand what it is to be living in a different
environment. We had a gap of 50 years in the relationship, and for us it is a
natural situation that we are finding each other again.”

But how long
will the luster last? Some in the Foreign Ministry say that the longer the
former Iron Countries are in the EU, and the more they are exposed to a pro-
Palestinian bent in Brussels, the sooner will the romance fade.

Degutis
believes those concerns are overblown.

“Our interest in Israel is
growing,” he said, adding that this interest does not “have a direct link with
EU membership.” He said the interest is seen everywhere, in the growth of
tourism and trade, and the huge increase in the number of high-level political
visits.

Equally overblown, he indicated, were warnings that Israel will
face a boycott from Europe if it does not make progress on the diplomatic track
with the Palestinians. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who also heads Israel’s
negotiating team with the Palestinians, issued such a warning two weeks ago to
an accounting conference in Eilat.

Asked if he could foresee a European
boycott if the peace process does not progress, Degutis – reflecting the
sentiment heard over the last week by two other ambassadors – said, “I wouldn’t
see anything like this happening in Lithuania. There is no such thing like
discussing boycotts of Israel. On the contrary, today our agenda– supported by
the people and the government – is building up the relationship, strengthening
it. The relationship has never been as good as it is today.”

One sign of
the growing ties, he said, beyond trade that has doubled over the last two years
to 60 million euros, and tourism that has also doubled during this time period
to 20,000, is the number of Israelis who have taken out Lithuanian
passports.

In addition to some 200,000 Litvaks living in the country
today, and some 4,000-5,0000 Jews living in Lithuania, Degutis said there are
5,000 full-blown Lithuanian citizens in Israel, “Israelis or descendants who
came to Israel before 1990.”

According to Lithuanian law, anyone who left
Lithuania under the Soviet occupation until the country’s independence in 1990,
and their descendants to the second generation, are eligible for
citizenship.

“This is a huge activity in our embassy,” he said. “We have
hundreds of people every day. We are happy, we are happy that our family here
grows, that we have people who want to come and rediscover
Lithuania.”

Reminded that these people are probably not motivated by any
deep affinity or attachment to Lithuanian culture or the country’s Grand Duchy,
but rather by the prospect of securing an EU passport that will make it easier
to work, travel and study in Europe, the Israel-friendly Degutis replied,
“That’s OK. These are not numbers that would create any issue. It is good for
us, because there is additional incentive and motivation for them to look back
at the roots of their families, and to reconnect.

Sites Of Interest

The Jerusalem Post Customer Service Center can be contacted with any questions or requests:
Telephone: *2421 * Extension 4 Jerusalem Post or 03-7619056 Fax: 03-5613699E-mail: subs@jpost.com
The center is staffed and provides answers on Sundays through Thursdays between 07:00 and 14:00 and Fridays only handles distribution requests between 7:00 and
13:00
For international customers: The center is staffed and provides answers on Sundays through Thursdays between 7AM and 6PM
Toll Free number in Israel only 1-800-574-574
Telephone +972-3-761-9056
Fax: 972-3-561-3699
E-mail: subs@jpost.com